Bad jobs?

Oh, yeah.

I've done some awful things, let me tell you. Some really fun things--working at a movie theatre when you're a teenager who loves movies is still, in my opinion, one of the best jobs ever--but boy, it's all kind of been downhill from there.

The worst one, though? Aside from waitressing, which is just a terrible job, no matter where, or how you look at it?

I worked the phones for a large credit card bank--one of the largest, in fact. It was awful. It wasn't the work that was so terrible. That, like any work when you're dealing with the public, ran the gamut from absolutely miserable to tons of fun. I remember a few callers who I just hit it off with immediately, people who I literally ended up spending half and hour or an hour chatting with. Ever get that? And suddenly you're not working at all, you're just having a good time and helping a friend with a problem they might be having, and (let's face it) doing whatever you can do to help your friend out, including sneakily crediting them back finance charges or giving them a rate you're not supposed to offer.

But the company I worked for? Awful. And it was even worse because they were one of these companies always talking about how great they are, how well they treat their employees.

But it's a lie. They don't treat you well, they do things like buy you a lousy pizza to get you to work through lunch. And I don't mean lousy like an adverb, I mean it like an adjective--it was a greasy, cheap pizza. No, they didn't have to buy it for us, but I'd rather be paid overtime than given pizza, you know?

It was just a sea of management behaving unprofessionally, while reminding us at every minute how professional we had to be. Have you ever tried to deal with a customer issue while your managers play baseball behind your head? It's not fun. Or trying to hold your tongue while your managers make racist comments when they think nobody can ehar them? Or while they inform you that a coworker has been fired and why? Or call the doctor you took a day off to go see, to find out why you were there (I am not making that up, I got an outraged phone call from my doctor about that one)?

I totally should have sued.

See, I think any work, even the most dull or physically demanding, can be made tolerable by a good working environment. The easiest job can be made intolerable.

The bank? Intolerable. I will never work in that sort of world again.

Gods I love writing! Even when it's going terribly it's the best job in the world!